Chapter 23 · Rift Protocol - Chapter 23: One Bullet Left

"Kess." Dalen's voice splits down the middle. One half sounds like him. The other half is flat, mechanical, wrong. "Run."

I don't move. I'm still holding the suppressor he shoved into my hand. It's small, silver, cold. A single injection port on one end. His neural port on the other.

"I said run." His eyes flicker. Brown to black to brown again. He's fighting it. I can see the strain in his jaw, the way his fingers twitch like he's trying to grab his own wrist and stop whatever's crawling up his spine.

Behind him, the first blank body stands. Its eyes are solid black. It smiles at me.

"I'm not leaving you," I say.

"You don't have a choice." His voice cracks. For a second, it's all Dalen. "Kess, I can feel it. It's pulling everything out of me. Every op. Every target. Every person I ever—" He chokes. His hand flies up to his temple, fingers digging in like he's trying to claw something out. "It knows how I think. How I move. It's going to use me to hunt you."

"Then I'll stop it."

"You can't stop me." His eyes go full black.